“I don’t cat-fight,” Mustang says coldly. “I don’t trust you because I don’t know you. All I know is your mother’s reputation is not apolitical. She’s a schemer. A briber. My father knew it. I know it. You know it.”
“Yes, to a degree my mother is a schemer. And so am I and so are you, but if there’s one thing I am not, it is a liar. I’ve never told one, and never will. Unlike some people.” The arch of eyebrows makes it quite clear what she means.
“Bad apples spawn bad seeds, Darrow,” Daxo warns. “Put your feelings aside on this one. She was raised by a dangerous woman. There’s no need to mistreat her, but we can’t have her in this council. I would encourage you to place her in quarters till this is over.”
“Yes.” Kavax raps the table with his knotted knuckles. “Agreed. Bad seeds.”
“I can’t believe you lured me into this mess, Darrow,” Lorn mutters. He looks out of place here. Too old, too gray to be party to squabbling. “Can’t even trust your own council.”
“Grumpy. Low blood sugar perhaps?” Sevro tosses him the half-gnawed drumstick. Lorn lets it flop against the table, unimpressed by the display.
“We would hear your wisdom, Arcos,” Kavax says respectfully.
“I would listen to your councillors, Darrow.” Lorn pops his knotted fingers. “I’ve got scars older than them, but they aren’t completely naïve. Better safe than sorry. Confine Victra to her quarters.”
“You don’t even know me, Arcos!” Victra protests, finally pulled out of her chair. You see the warrior in her now, flaring just beneath the cultured calm. “This is an affront to me. I was fighting with Darrow when you were still cowering in your floating castle pretending it’s a.d. 1200.”
“Time does not prove one’s loyalty.” Lorn scoffs and touches his scars. “Scars do.”
“You took those fighting for the Sovereign. You were her sword. How much blood did you draw for her? How many men did you watch burn at the side of the Ash Lord?”
“Do not speak of Rhea to me, girl.”
Victra’s teeth glimmer in a cruel smile. “So there is a Rage Knight beneath the wrinkles and moth-bitten rags.”
Lorn surveys her, seeing the wrathfulness of youth in her, and he looks to me, as if to wonder just what sort of man brings Golds like Tactus and Victra to his side. Does he even know me? his eyes ask. No, he’s realizing. Of course not.
“Honor in the first. Honor in the last. Those are my family words. Whereas you … young lady, well, the name Julii does not exactly lift one to nobler purpose, does it? You’re just traders.”
“My name has nothing to do with who I am.”
“Snakes beget snakes,” Lorn replies, not even looking at her now. “You mother was a snake. She begat you. Ergo, you are a snake. And what do snakes do, my dear? They slither. They wait, coldblooded, cruel in the grass, and then they bite.”
“We could ransom her,” Sevro says. “Threaten to kill her unless Agrippina joins us or at least stops pissing all over our plans.”
“You’re a sinister little shit, aren’t you?” Victra asks.
“I’m Gold, bitch. What’d you expect? Warm milk and cookies just because I’m pocketsized?”
Roque clears his throat, drawing eyes.
“It seems we are being unfair, hypocritical even,” he observes. “All here know my family is full of politicians. Some of you might even think I come from noble blood and noble seed. But we Fabii are a dishonest breed. Mother’s a Senator who lines her pockets with agricultural funds and lowColor medical subsidies so that she can live in more homes than her mother did. My paternal grandfather poisoned his own nephew over a Violet starlet a quarter his age, who ended up stabbing him and blinding herself when she discovered he killed the nephew, her lover. But that’s nothing next to my great-great-uncle, who fed servants to lampreys because he read Emperor Tiberius pioneered the strange passion. Yet here I am, spawn of all that sin, and I wager no one here questions my loyalty.
“Why then do we doubt Victra’s? She has remained steadfast to Darrow since the Academy. None of you were there. None of you know anything about it, so I insist you shut your mouths. Even when her mother demanded she abandon Darrow and Augustus, she stayed. Even when the Praetorians came to kill us on Luna, she stayed. Now she is here, when we are little more than a ragtag coalition of bandits, and you question her. You disgust me. It makes me sad to be amongst you bickerers. So if another man or woman questions her loyalty, I will lose faith in this fellowship. And I will leave.”
Victra’s smile for him is like a sunrise, creeping, slow, then blindingly bright. It disappears slower than I thought it might have. The warmth in her surprises Roque as well, and his fair cheeks are quick to flush.
“I am not my mother,” Victra announces. “Or my sister. My ships are mine. My men are mine.” Her wide-set eyes are cool, almost sleepy, but they flash as she leans forward now. “Trust me, and you will find reward. But all that matters is what Darrow thinks.”
All eyes turn to me and my silence. In truth, I was not thinking about Victra, but about Tactus and wondering how easily he could tell that I kept him at arm’s length. When I showed him love at first and he rejected the violin, I grew embarrassed and hurt. So I pulled back. Better if I had been true to how I felt and stayed the course. His walls would have broken. He never would have left. He could still be here. I’ll not make the same mistake again, least of all to Victra. I reached out to her in the hall, and I will do so in this company.
“Chance made us Golds,” I say. “We could have been born any other Color. Chance put us in our families. But we choose our friends. Victra chose me. I chose her, like I chose all of you. And if we cannot trust our friends …” I look to Roque plaintively, seeking absolution in his eyes, “… then what’s the point in breathing?”
I look back to Victra. Her eyes say a thousand things, and the Jackal’s words come back to me as he lay burned on his bed from the bomb. Victra loves me. Could it really be so simple? She does all these things not for the Julii way of gain and profit, but for that simple human emotion. I wonder, could I ever love her? No. No, in another world, Mustang would never be a warrior, would never be cruel. In any world, Victra would always be this. Always a warrior, like Eo really. Always too wild and full of fire to find peace in anything else.
Mustang notices something pass between Victra and me.
“Then it’s settled,” Mustang says. “Back to the matter at hand. Pliny waits now with the main fleet. There, he has brought all of my father’s bannermen to compose a document of formal surrender to the Sovereign and a restructuring of Mars. The deal, as far as I understand it, will make him the head of his own house. He, along with the Julii and the Bellona, will be the powers on Mars. Once the peace is agreed upon, it will be sealed with the execution of my father in the courtyard of our Citadel in Agea.” Mustang looks around the table, letting gravity build behind her words. “If we do not rescue my father, this war is done. The Moon Lords will not come to our aid. In fact, they will send ships against us. Vespasian’s forces from Neptune will turn around. We will be alone against the entire Society. And we will die.”
“Good. That makes things simple,” I say. “We take back our fleet, then we take back Mars. Any ideas?”
33
A Dance
I sleep with a dream of the past. My hand curled in the tendrils of her hair. About us the vale lay quiet in slumber. Even the children did not yet stir. The birds rested on knotted limbs in the pinewood nearby, and I heard nothing but her breath and the crackling of the old fire. The bed smelled of her. No scent of flowers or perfume. Just the earthy musk of her skin, of the oils in the hair around my hands, of her hot breath as it warmed my cheek. Her hair was of our planet. It was wild like mine, dirty like mine, red like mine. A bird outside croons loudly. Incessantly. Louder. Louder.
And I wake hearing someone at my door.
Kicking aside sweaty sheets, I sit up on the edge of the mattress. “Visual.” A holo app
ears of Mustang in the hall. I rise instinctively to let her in, but when I reach the door, I pause. We have our plan. There’s nothing left to discuss at this hour. Nothing from which any good could come.
I watch her on the holo. Shifting foot to foot, something in her hands. If I let her in … it’ll just cost us both in the end. I’ve already hurt Roque. Already killed Quinn and Tactus and Pax. Bringing her close now would be selfish. At the very best, she survives this war and she learns the truth about me. I back away from the door.
“Darrow, stop being an ass and let me in.”
My hand choses for me.
Her hair is wet and loose, her uniform replaced by a black kimono. How fragile she seems next to Ragnar, who lurks in the hall.
“Told you,” she says to Ragnar. To me she says, “Knew you’d be awake. Ragnar here was being stubborn. Said you needed to sleep. And he wouldn’t take the food I brought him.”
“Do you need something?” I ask more coldly than I intended.
Her feet make a show of shuffling nervously. “I’m … afraid of the dark.” She pushes past me. Ragnar watches this, eyes giving nothing away.
“I told you to go to bed, Ragnar.”
He does not move.
“Ragnar, if I’m not safe here, I’m not safe anywhere. Go to bed.”
“I sleep with my eyes open, dominus.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Well, do it in your bunk, Stained. That’s an order,” I say, hating the master’s words as soon as they come from my mouth.
Reluctantly, he nods his head and slips silently down the hall. I watch him go as the door hisses closed. I turn to find Mustang inspecting my suite. It’s more wood and stone than metal, the walls carved and worked with woodland scenes. Strange the efforts these people go to in order to make themselves feel part of history and not a piece of the future.
“Sevro must pissed he’s not the only one lurking behind you anymore.”
“Sevro’s grown up a bit since you last saw him. He even sleeps in beds.”
She laughs at that. “Well Ragnar was so adamant I go away that I thought you might have company.”
“You know I don’t use Pinks.”
“It’s big,” she says of the suite. “Six rooms for little old you. Aren’t you going to offer me something to drink?”
“Would you—”
“No, thank you.” She tells the room’s controls to play music. Mozart. “But you don’t really like music, do you?”
“Not this sort. It’s … stuffy.”
“Stuffy? Mozart was a rebel, a brigand of monolithic genius! A breaker of all that was stuffy.”
I shrug. “Maybe. But then the stuffy people got ahold of him.”
“You’re such a roughneck sometimes. I thought that Pink of yours—Theodora? Thought she would have managed to feed you some culture. So what do you like, then?” She runs her hands along a carving of a wolf leading its pack. “Not that electronic madness the Howlers thump their heads to, I hope. Makes sense that the Greens came up with that … it’s like listening to a robot having a seizure.”
“Have much experience with robots?” I ask as she moves around the Victory Armor in a room off to the side of the entry hall. The Sovereign gave it to the Ash Lord when he burned Rhea. Mustang’s fingers play over the frost-hued metal.
“Father’s Oranges and Greens had a few robots in their engineering labs. Ancient, rusted things that Father had refurbished and put in the museums.” She laughs to herself. “He used to take me there back when I wore dresses and my mother was still alive. Absolutely detested the things. I remember Mother laughing about his paranoia, especially when Adrius tried restarting one of the combat models from Eurasia. Father was convinced that robots would have overthrown man and now rule the Solar System if Earth’s empires had never been destroyed.”
I snort out a laugh.
“What?” she asks.
“I’m just …” I catch my breath. “I’m trying to imagine the great ArchGovernor Augustus having nightmares of robots.” Another bout of laughter seizes me. “Does he suppose they’d want more oil? More vacation time?”
Mustang watches me, amused. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” My laughter gradually subsides. I hold my stomach. “I’m fine.” I can’t stop grinning. “Is he afraid of aliens too?”
“I never asked him.” She taps the armor. “But they’re out there, you know.”
I stare at her. “That’s not in the archives.”
“Oh, no no. I mean we’ve never found any. But the Drake-Roddenberry equation suggests the mathematic probability is N = R* x fp x ne x fl x fi x fc x L. Where R* is the average rate of star formation in our galaxy, where fp is the fraction of those stars that have planets … You’re not even listening anymore.”
“What do you suppose they would think of us?” I ask. “Of man?”
“I suppose they would think we’re beautiful, strange, and inexplicably horrible to one another.” She points down a hall. “Is that the training room?” She flips off her slippers and walks away down a marble hall, casting a look back at me over her shoulder. I follow. Lights come mutedly to life as we pass. She slips ahead faster than I care to follow. I find her moments later in the center of the circular training room. The white mat is soft under my feet. Carvings line the wooden walls. “The House of Grimmus is an old one,” she says, pointing to a frieze of a man in armor. “You can see the Ash Lord’s first ancestor there. Aucus au Grimmus, the first Gold to touch land in the Iron Rain that took the American eastern seaboard after one of Cassius’s ancestors, forget his name, broke through the Atlantic Fleet. Then there is Vitalia au Grimmus, the Great Witch, right there.” She turns to me. “Do you even know the history of the things you try to break?”
“It was Scipio au Bellona who defeated the Atlantic Fleet.”
“Was it?” she asks.
“I’ve studied the history,” I say. “Just as well as you.
“But you stand apart from it, don’t you?” She paces around me. “You always have. Like you’re an outsider looking in. It was growing up away from all this on your parents asteroid mine that did the trick, wasn’t it? That’s why you can ask a question like ‘What would aliens think of us?’”
“You’re just as much an outsider as I am. I’ve read your dissertations.”
“You have?” She’s surprised.
“Believe it or not, I can read too.” I shake my head. “It’s like everyone forgets I only missed one question on the Institute’s slangsmarts test.”
“Ew. You missed a question?” She wrinkles her nose as she picks a practice razor from a bench. “I suppose that’s why you weren’t in Minerva.”
“How did Pax manage to get picked by House Minerva, by the way? I’ve always wondered … he wasn’t exactly a scholar.”
“How did Roque end up in Mars?” she replies with a shrug. “Each of us have hidden depths. Now, Pax wasn’t as bright as Daxo is, but wisdom is found in the heart not the head. Pax taught me that.” She smiles distantly. “The one grace my father gave me after my mother died was letting me visit the Telemanus estate. He kept Adrius and me apart to make assassination of his heirs more difficult. I was lucky to be near them. Though if I hadn’t been, maybe Pax wouldn’t have been quite so loyal. Maybe he wouldn’t have asked to be in Minerva. Maybe he’d be alive. Sorry …” Shaking away the sadness, she looks back to me with a tight smile. “What did you think of my dissertations?”
“Which one?”
“Surprise me.”
“‘The Insects of Specialization.’” Snap. A practice razor slaps into my arm, stinging the flesh. I yelp in surprise. “What the hell?”
Mustang stands there looking innocent, swishing the practice blade back and forth. “I was making sure you were paying attention.”
“Paying attention? I was answering your question!”
She shrugs. “All right. Perhaps I just wanted to hit you.” She lashes
at me again.
I dodge. “Why?”
“No reason in particular.” She swings. I dodge. “But they say even a fool learns something once it hits him.”
“Don’t quote …” She slashes, I twist aside. “… Homer … to me.”
“Why is that dissertation your favorite?” she asks coolly, swinging at me again. The practice razor has no edge, but it is as hard as a wooden cane. I leave my feet, twisting sideways out of the way like a Lykos tumbler.
“Because …” I dodge another.
“When you’re on your heels, you’re a liar. On your toes, you spit truth.” She swings again. “Now spit.” She hits my kneecap. I roll away, trying to reach the other practice razors, but she keeps me from them with a flurry of swings. “Spit!”
“I liked it …” I jump backward. “… because you said ‘Specialization makes us limited, simple insects; a fact … from … which Gold is not immune.’”
She stops attacking and stares accusatorially, and I realize I’ve fallen into a trap.
“If you agree with that, then why do you insist on making yourself only a warrior?”
“It’s what I am.”
“It’s what you are?” she laughs. “You who trust Victra. A Julii. You who trusted Tactus. You who let an Orange give strategic recommendations. You who gives command of your ship to a Docker and keeps an entourage of bronzies?” She wags a finger at me. “Don’t be a hypocrite now, Darrow au Andromedus. If you’re going to tell everyone else they can choose their destiny, then you damn well better do the same.”
She’s too smart to lie to. That’s why I’m so ill at ease around her when she asks me questions, when she probes things I can’t explain. There’s no explainable motivation to so many of my actions if I am really an Andromedus who grew up in my Gold parents asteroid mining colony. My history is hollow to her. My drive confusing … if I was born a Gold. This must all look like ambition, like bloodlust. And without Eo, it would be.
“That look,” Mustang says, taking a step back from me. “Where do you go when you look at me like that?” The color slips from her face, retreating into her as her smile slackens. “Is it Victra?”